The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it may be described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present technology.
Anionic Element Reagent Complexes, or AERCS, complexes of a hydride molecule and an element, are highly useful in the synthesis of nanoparticles. Not only are AERCs relatively easily formed and stable, but through various, simple wet chemistry procedures, they can produce high purity elemental nanoparticles having the element formerly contained in the AERC.
Elemental nanoparticles having a combination of two or more element types (e.g. metal, metalloid, and non-metal), per nanoparticle, can be termed “cross-type elemental nanoparticles.” A common, and highly useful, example is silicon carbide nanoparticles. Wet chemistry methods for synthesizing cross-type elemental nanoparticles are in many cases not well developed. To the extent that synthetic methods exist, they often involve high-temperature gas phase reactions, or other challenging and/or expensive steps not easily amenable to scale-up.
In addition, while a large number of different cross-type elemental nanoparticles are theoretically possible, including those having three or more elements of two or more element types per nanoparticle, synthetic methods for producing many of them are largely undeveloped.
Reagents amenable to a robust, scalable wet chemistry synthesis of cross-type elemental nanoparticles of virtually any variation would therefore be desirable.